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here, and that this is the topic of discourse.'

He does not devote his life to books, or to authorship, but to doing good. He is a constant and laborious observer of the

Of his literary character Mr. Bel- world, for the world's sake; a hearty and lows thus speaks:

"I have said that he did not run the common career of an author. Except an occasional sermon or review, he published nothing until a very few years, and not until after his general reputation was established. His literary fame grew out of a few essays, published at intervals in the Christian Examiner, which attracted the attention of the world. This is a remarkable instance of the immediate and wide recognition of intellectual greatness and entireness, in a few disconnected papers, neither addressed to fame, nor widely circulated. But the plain reason is, that everything this man writes is full of him; full of the great and glorious principles, with which he is now identified. He writes nothing that does not develope, enforce, or sustain the neglected and fundamental truths, which it is his mission to revive or freshen in the human heart. It matters not how secular his theme may be, he is never false to his own sacred views; never inconsistent with them; never even momentarily forgetful of them; nay, all that he has written in the way of criticism, biography, or politics, has been only in application of his religious or spiritual principles to the different phases of life. There are few great writers, from whom so few splendid passages could be selected. His writings press rather than strike; they are pervaded by gravity, rather than charged with the electric fluid. His style is so transparent, and the writer himself so carefully withdrawn, that nothing but the naked truth appears in what he says. You think almost as little of the literary execution of his works, as in the case of the sacred writings. It is only when your attention is drawn to the subject, that you notice how faultless they are in this respect. It is impossible not to feel that the love of fame has not given birth to these productions. You see that it is not the literary world which is addressed. He does not enter into competition with other aspirants for reputation, before the tribunal of critics. He addresses man, and every man. He appeals to his brethren throughout the world. It is neither for money, nor reputation, nor amusement; for the sake of combatting this theory or that opinion; but to teach the world; to say what ought to be said upon a vital subject. He is not a literary man. He is a public teacher. He is not a scholar; he is a moral censor and guide.

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deep sympathiser in all human concerns; an anxious and earnest friend of man. His life and fortunes are identified with humanity; as that lives, so he lives. He is a writer only so far as he is a public thinker, and a guardian of the common weal. To correct public sentiment, to enlighten public ignorance, to public insensibility, this is the sole object, and this is the measure of his writings. His works, therefore, are a part of his life; they are acts. He writes nothing abstract, nothing systematic, nothing learned, nothing merely tasteful, nothing for posterity. His writings are a part of the movement of the age in which he lives. They are for and to the present; they are all purely moral and spiritual, and relate to man's highest, immediate, and eternal welfare. They concern the right and wrong of practical opinions, institutions, judgments, actions. Based upon everlasting truths, or the exhibition of those truths themselves, they have nothing abstract in them. They concern every man in his practical views and conduct. Such are his writings. Have I not rightly said that he has not run the common career of an author ?”

With the following, relating to the political character of this great teacher and moralist, we find ourselves compelled to conclude:

"The greatness of human nature, resulting from man's likeness to God, inspired Dr. Channing with a strong faith in human progress. There is enough to be evolved in man, there is material enough in him, for God is in him. There is no obscurity in the law of his progress. He is made to know God and to love him. All his sufferings come of his alienation from God. There is nothing to prevent a vast increase of happiness, a quite millennial beauty and excellence in society, but the ignorance, and sensuality, and selfishness of men; and from this there is a susceptibility of recovery in man, and means of grace in the gospel, which leaves no man as full of moral power and Christian experience, as he was, room to doubt of the certain triumph of human nature over its own weakness. All his hope for society, confident as it was, was placed upon Christianity operating through the individual souls of men, with its enlightening and sanctifying power. He had a boundless faith in the efficacy of truth, because it addressed a nature made after

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that of truth's Author. His faith in God and in man were co-extensive. Human history and God's providence are synonymous expressions. Because God reigns, man shall not always be trampled under the foot of his brother, or beneath his own brutal passions. Earnest and prompt as his exertions were against, and strong as was his sense of, the evils of society, he was undismayed by them. He was not amazed and confounded by the sinfulness of the world, because he saw the sources of it, and knew that they were finite; because, too, he saw the remedy, and knew that it was infinite. Christianity enforcing reason and conscience against the animal and selfish passions of man, is like Michael wrestling with Satan-an invulnerable angel contending with a mortal enemy-the undying spirit against the doomed flesh."

"There is one word that covers every cause, to which Channing devoted his talents and his heart, and that word is Freedom. Liberty is the key of his religious, his political, his philanthropic principles. Free the slave, free the serf, free the ignorant, free the sinful. Let there be no chains upon the conscience, the intellect, the pursuits, or the persons of men. Free agency is the prime distinction and privilege of humanity. It is the first necessity of a moral being. Extinguish freedom, and you extinguish humanity. Tyranny is spiritual murder, as Sin is moral suicide. All infringements of liberty are to be regarded as belonging to the same class. Political oppression, restrictions upon education, religious thraldom, domestic slavery, the tyranny of public opinion, the rule of fashion and wealth, the domination of a strong mind over weak ones; all these he dreaded, and for the same reason. Therefore, he labored for no special sort of freedom. He was as eloquent a defender of free political institutions, as of religious liberty; of popular education, as of negro emancipation. So he denounced associations for their tyrannical influence. His whole religious teachings are directed towards freeing men from servitude to their passions, and appetites, and impulses. He would make every soul master of itself. The individual is weakened by dependence; he is enslaved by authority. Let him be his own master; act upon his own judgment and responsibility, and so have that root in himself, which alone gives worth to man. It was upon this principle, that Dr. Channing strove to dignify humble pursuits in the eyes of their followers. He would not have a man think meanly of himself, or his occupation. He would exalt toil by the spirit of independence

carried into it, and by the native dignity of the being it tasks. He frowned upon the silly pride which disdains labor. Without decrying or undervaluing social distinctions, he insisted most earnestly upon essential equality, and mutual respect. He would lift up the head of false abasement, and make the menial walk erect in the presence of the master; he would teach the lowly to respect nothing but worth, virtue, intelligence in their social superiors, and the proud to recognize goodness and enlightenment in the humblest walks of life. Few know how much this man has done to raise into selfrespect and happiness, the mechanics and laborers of our country, who felt themselves ground down in spirit, under the assumptions and pride ascribed to the more privileged classes. I have seen the influence of that single tract of Dr. Channing's, styledSelf Culture.' It has reconciled thousands to manual labor, satisfied them with their condition, by substituting their own respect, and the respect of God, for the condescension of riches and fashion, and taught them to look down upon ignorance and folly, even clothed in purple and fine linen, and faring sumptuously every day. And what is more, he taught social equality without Jacobinism and Agrarianism. The poor and humble were no better, but only as good as the rich and the proud. A man was a man in rags, but also a man in purple; the soiled hand of labor was still human, and so was the gloved hand of luxury. Toil needed to be taught what was respectable in affluence, as well as affluence what was venerable in toil. If there was pride, reserve, and contempt, in the high, there was envy, jealousy, and hatred, in the low. Therefore, if the rich respect the poor, the poor shall respect the rich. The less favored are bound to honor and submit to the constitution of society, if the more favored are bound to correct and adjust inequalities to the advantage of the unprivileged. In Dr. Channing's writings, attention is not fixed so much upon what is different, as upon what is the same in all men; mutual respect and love are based upon our common nature and destiny, upon our brotherhood and filial relation to one God and Father. Most radical as his spirit is in respect of human equality, there is nothing disorganizing in his writings. In this he imitates and resembles the spirit of the gospel, which, without violence or revolution, saps the strength of all abuses and errors, and by taking a higher or a deeper ground than existing institutions, obtains room and play for its own principles, without immediately or passionately displacing the customs or order which it yet dooms and finally destroys."

SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY.

BY O. A. BROWNSON.

I.

THE SUBJECT AND THE OBJECT.

PHILOSOPHY is the science of Life. Its problem is to find the Ultimate from which we may explain the origin of man and nature, determine the laws of their growth, obtain a presentiment of their destiny, and become inspired with a pure and noble zeal to live and die for the glory of God, and the progress of mankind.

There is and can be no higher problem than this,-none more worthy to engage the whole force of our minds and our hearts. It is the problem of problems; it includes all other problems; and on its solution depend all other problems for theirs. We have answered no question, whether of man or nature, of society, religion, or morals, till we have traced it to the Ultimate, beyond which there is no question to be asked, or to be answered.

But the Ultimate for ever escapes us. It recedes always in proportion as we advance; and is never seized save in a finite and relative form. The complete solution, therefore, transcends, and for ever must transcend, the reach of our powers. All that we can do, and all that we should attempt, is to obtain the solution that shall meet the wants and satisfy the heart of our own epoch. This solution, though it must one day needs be outgrown, as we out grow the garments of our childhood, will, nevertheless, bring us a measure of peace, become the point of departure for new inquirers, and pave the way for new and more adequate solu

tions.

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we have nothing but thought with which to go before or behind it. What, then, is Thought? What is its reach ? What are its conditions? "For I thought," says Locke, "that the first step towards satisfying certain inquiries the mind of man was very apt to run into, was to take a survey of our own understandings, examine our powers, and see to what things they were adapted."

Thought implies both Subject and Object, that which thinks and that which is thought. What, then, is the Subject? What is the Object?

The SUBJECT is the me, that which I call myself, and express by the pronoun I in the phrases I am, I think, I will, I love; or by the pronoun me, when I say of some particular thing, it pleases me, grieves me, injures me, does me good.

I do not know myself by direct immediate knowledge; I come to a knowledge of myself only in the phenomenon, in which I see myself reflected as in a glass. I am never my own immediate object. "The understanding," Locke very properly remarks, “like the eye, whilst it makes us see and perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance, and make it its own object." This, if we substitute no direct notice for "no notice," is as true when affirmed of me, as when affirmed of my understanding. I never stand face to face with myself, looking_into my own eyes. The Seer and the Seen, the Subject and the Object, are as distinct in psychology as they are in logic; and they are distinct in logic, because they are distinct in the nature of things.

Yet some modern psychologists, misapprehending the fact of consciousness, have questioned this statement, and

contended that the Subject may be its own object, and that I may know my self by direct, immediate knowledge. But if this were so, I could know at once, and prior to experience, all that I am, and all that I can do or become. I could know myself active without having acted; thinking without having thought; sentient without having felt. I should know beforehand the nature and the reach of the passions;-love without having ever loved; hatred without having ever hated; grief without having ever grieved. I should know at once all that I ever can know, whether of myself or of that which is not myself. But it is only God who can know himself by direct immediate knowledge; for only that which is independent, self-existent, and self-living, can contain in itself its own object.

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No man knows thoroughly himself, or can say, till enlightened by experience, what he is able to do, or to become. Even they who best obey the injunction, Know thyself," are but slight proficients in self-knowledge. The bulk of mankind are grossly ignorant of themselves. Moreover, we advance in the knowledge of ourselves. Every day reveals us to ourselves under some new aspect. The older we grow, the more varied our experience, severe our struggles, and trying the vicissitudes of life, the better do we come to know and comprehend ourselves. But did we know ourselves by direct, immediate knowledge, what room would there be for this progress? and how could this varied experience, and these struggles, trials, and vicissitudes, become the medium of advancing us in the knowledge of ourselves?

But, though I know not myself by direct, immediate knowledge, yet I know myself mediately, indirectly, through the medium of my acts. Whenever I think, I find myself as one of the elements of the thought. I never think without knowing that it is I and not another that thinks. This is the meaning of the " Cogito, ergò sum" of Descartes," I think, therefore I am." Descartes did not offer in this, nor pretend to offer, as he himself expressly tells us, an argument for his existence; but merely stated the fact in which he found it. Not being able to see or to recognize myself in myself, to see, as

it were, my own eye, I should be to myself as if I were not, did I not think. When I do not think, I do not exist to my own apprehension. How know I then that I exist at all? I cannot prove my existence; but I have no need to prove it, for whenever I think, I always find myself in the thought as THAT-WHICH-THINKS. As certain as it is that I think, so certain is it then that I am; for I always think myself as the subject of the thought.

I do not infer my existence from the fact of thinking. I do not infer it at all; but in the act of thinking I find it. My existence is never an inference, and logic has nothing to do with establishing it. I cannot prove my existence, neither can I deny it, nor doubt it. To doubt is to think. But I never think without finding myself as the one who thinks. Consequently, in doubting my existence I should find it. I cannot deny my own existence; not only because in denying it I should logically affirm it, by affirming the existence of the denier, but I should be conscious of myself, in the act of denying, as the one who makes the denial.

This finding of myself in the phenomenon, or as the one who thinks, is precisely what is meant by the term CONSCIOUSNESS. Consciousness is not a faculty, nor even an act of a peculiar sort. It is simply a higher degree of what philosophers call perception. As its name implies,-cum scientia,—it is something that goes along with knowledge, or something in addition to simple perception,-ad-perceptie, apperception,-and is easily comprehended. I think a rose. This is a simple phe nomenon, or rather a single act of the mind; but, in addition to the perception of the rose, the object of the thought, I recognize, but as an integral part of the same phenomenon, myself as the agent thinking, or the one who perceives the rose. This recognition of myself is the consciousness. All acts in which I so recognize myself as actor or thinker, are called by Leibnitz APPERCEPTIONS. All thoughts are properly apperceptions, for they all include in the view of the thinker, both the subject thinking and the object thought.

But according to this, consciousness is not, as is sometimes supposed, the

1842.] The Subject and the Object.-Reality of the Object.

immediate perception of myself in my
self. I am conscious of myself only in
the phenomenon, and even then only
under the relation of its subject. I can
speak, I can think, or even conceive of
myself only as the subject of an act.
I can define myself only by referring to
my acts. I express myself, indeed, by
the personal pronoun, but never with-
out joining it to the verb. I, me, taken
alone, without a verb, expressed or un-
derstood, means nothing. It must be
always I am, I do, I think, I will, I
love, or I hate. In my essence, save
so far as my being is revealed in my
doing, I never know or apprehend my
self. I find myself never as pure es-
sence, but always as cause, and as be-
ing only so far forth as cause; that is
to say,
I find myself, exist to myself,
only in my efforts, productions, or phe-
nomena. I am conscious, therefore, of

II.

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myself only under the relation of sub-
ject or cause; and, therefore, it is only
under this relation of subject or cause,
only as projected into the phenomenon,
that I can be my own object, that I can
study myself, and learn what I am and
of what I am capable.

But the phenomenon is never the
SOLE product of the subject. There is
and can be no thought with a single
term. It is impossible to think with-
out thinking an OBJECT as well as a
subject. I never think without en-
countering an object, and only in con-
currence with the object. But in the
act of thinking where I find myself, and
where only I find myself, I always find
myself as subject, never as OBJECT. I
find the OBJECT always, invariably op-
posed to the subject, and, therefore,
never as me, but ALWAYS AS NOT ME.

REALITY OF THE OBJECT.

I RECOGNIZE myself, am conscious of
my own existence, am able to affirm
that I am, only in the act of thinking.
But I can think only on condition of
encountering in the phenomenon an
object which, as opposed to the subject
Then I
or me, must needs be not me.
can never find myself without finding
at the same time, and in the same phe-
nomenon, that which is not myself.
But I do find myself in every thought.
It follows, then, that both myself and
that which is not myself, the me and
the not me, are given in each and
every thought, in the first and simplest,
as well as in the last and most com-
plex.

in philosophy. It settles the question
so long agitated concerning the object-
ive validity of human knowledge, and
puts an end at once and for ever to all
IDEALISM, and to all SKEPTICISM. The
object is no creature of the subject;
for it is as essential to the production
of the phenomenon we term thought,
as is the subject itself. Where there is
no subject, of course there is no
thought; where no object, equally no
thought. Since the object precedes
thought as one of its conditions, it can-
not be a product of thought; since its
existence is essential to the activity or
to the manifestation of the subject, it
must be independent of the subject,
and therefore not me. If not me, it
menon; that is to say, it must be in
must be what I find it in the pheno-
itself what I think it, or what it
enters for into the thought as one of its
elements. For, if it were not what I
think it; if it entered into the pheno-
menon for what it is not in itself, it
would not be not me, but me; and
therefore not object but subject, which
were a contradiction in terms. Every
thought contains an object; and this ob-
ject, whatever it be, is therefore not
me, but exists really out of me, and in-
dependent of me. The object I think
This conclusion is of immense reach then really is; and is, not because I

The highest degree of certainty I ever have or can aspire to, is that of my own existence. This is merely the certainty I have that in thinking I recognize myself as the subject of the thought. But the certainty I have, that in thinking I encounter an object, which is not me, is precisely equal to this. Consequently, the certainty I have of the existence of the Object, in all cases as not me, is precisely, objectively and subjectively, the certainty I have of my own existence, that is, my highest degree of certainty.

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